Share this

Read more!

Get our weekly email

Enter your email address

Roy Den Hollander doesn’t exactly look like
a revolutionary. He’s a reasonably
good looking guy -- nattily dressed, sort of preppy-corporate, Ivy-League
educated, former New York corporate lawyer. He should be comfortable in his late middle-age, approaching retirement
at the top end of the Top 1%. And yet
Den Hollander is not only an angry white man, he is, as he told me, “incensed,”
furious at the ways that men like him, upper class white men, are the victims
of a massive amount of discrimination – as white men. In this self-styled
revolutionary, the legions of oppressed men, have found their champion.

Men’s oppression is not an accident, Den Hollander
says. It’s the result of a concerted
campaign against men by furious feminists, a sort of crazed feminist version of
“girls Gone Wild” – more like “Feminazis Gone Furious.” And they’re winning. Roy Den Hollander is one of the few who is
standing up to them, or at least trying to. He suffers, he says, from PMS – “persecuted male syndrome.” As he told
a reporter, “the Feminazis have infiltrated institutions and there’s been a
transfer of rights from guys to girls.”

Men’s Rights activists see men as the
victims of reverse discrimination in every political, economic, and social
arena; feminism has been so successful that men are now the second sex; and men
have to stand up for their rights. In
doing so, they believe, they strike a blow against the wimpification of
American manhood: they get their manhood back by fighting for the rights of
men. Who says the personal isn’t also
political?

So how did we get here?

The origins of MRA

It might come as a bit of a surprise to
know that the initial seeds of the contemporary men’s rights movement were
planted in the same soil from which feminism sprouted. The critique of what
became known as the female sex role, the traditional ideology of femininity,
resonated for some men, whom by the early 1970s, took the feminist call for
women’s liberation as an opportunity to do some liberating of their own. “Men’s liberation” was born in a parallel
critique of the male sex role. If women
were imprisoned in the home, all housework and domestic drudgery, men were
exiled from the home, turned into soulless robotic workers, in harness
to a masculine mystique, so that their only capacity for nurturing was through
their wallets.

But feminists moved from a critique of
those sex roles – abstract ideological constructions – to a critique of the
actual behaviors of actual men, corporeal beings who acted in the name of those
antiquated roles. And once women began
to make it personal, to critique men’s behaviors – by making rape, sexual
harassment, domestic violence, part of the gender dynamics that were under
scrutiny -- the men’s libbers departed. Instead, the Men’s Liberationists stuck
with the analysis of roles, which, they argued, were equally oppressive to men;
they shifted their focus to those institutional arenas in which men were, they
argued, the victims of a new form of discrimination – gender discrimination
against men.

The question was why men were so
unhappy. What caused the male
malaise? The way different groups of
men resolved this question provided the origins of the various men’s
“movements” currently on offer.

One trajectory became known as the
mythopoetic men’s movement, often attributed to the work of Robert Bly and Michael Meade, and
writers like Sam
Keen (all of whom had best sellers in the early 1990s), who sought to
enable men to search for some “deep” or “essential” masculinity. The movement’s
leaders claimed that the authenticity of the male experience had been diluted
and polluted both by life in mass consumer society. Mythopoets were largely
gender separatists, neither feminist nor anti-feminist in their politics;
rather, they said, they were “masculinists” – of men, by men, and for men.

For another group, pro-feminist men, women’s
demands to enter the labour force meant that men did not need to stake their
identity solely in the workplace success. Women’s efforts to balance work and family life enabled men to reconnect
to their children and their partners. It turned out to these “pro-feminist”
men, that the feminist vision of full equality and gender justice might not be
such a bad thing for men – indeed, it might be the very political theory we’d
been searching for.

Out of the amorphous men’s liberation
movement, emerged a third group in the late 1980s and early 1990s that embraced
what they called men’s rights. They may have shared the initial critique of the
oppressive male sex role, and the desire to free men from it, but for the Men’s
Rights activists (MRAs) , that critique morphed into a celebration of all
things masculine, and a near-infatuation with the traditional masculine role
itself. Men didn’t need liberating from
traditional masculinity anymore; now they needed liberating from those who
would liberate them! Traditional
masculinity was no longer the problem; now its restoration was championed as
the solution. It wasn’t traditional notions of masculinity that made men so
miserable, it was women. Feminism was a
hateful ideology; feminists were castrating bitches. But here, also, contradictions seemed to prevent the movement
from ever articulating any coherent policy ideas. Feminism, they argued, has turned normal healthy feminine women
into a bunch of gold-digging consumerist harridans (never mind that feminism has provided the most coherent critique
of consumerist femininity in history).

Men’s Rights guys don’t know if they want
to be restored patriarchs or liberated men. The Men’s Rights movement became a
movement of – and for - angry white men.

To the MRAs, the real victims in
American society are men, and so they built organizations around men’s
anxieties and anger at feminism, groups like the National
Congress for Men, Men's Rights Inc. (MR, Inc) and Men Achieving Liberation and
Equality (MALE). These groups proclaimed their commitment to equality and to
ending sexism— which was why they were compelled to fight against feminism.
According to them, feminism actually gave women more freedom than men,
while men were still responsible for initiating sexual relationships, fighting
in wars, and paying alimony and child support.

Politically, this resentment and anger has
fuelled a new gender gap, the preponderance of middle-class, middle-aged,
straight white males who are now listing constantly to the right. Raised to
feel “entitled” themselves, they resented any entitlement programme that gave
anything to anyone else. Such sentiments about entitlement reveal a curious
characteristic of these new legions of angry white men: although white men
still have most of the power and control in the world, these particular white
men feel like victims. These ideas also reflect a somewhat nostalgic longing
for that past world, when men believed they could take
their places among the nation’s elite, simply by working hard and applying
themselves. Alas, such a world never existed; economic elites have always
managed to reproduce themselves despite the ideals of a meritocracy. But that
hasn’t stopped men from believing in it. It is the American Dream. And when men fail, they are humiliated, with nowhere to place their
anger.

The men’s rights movement today

Three social changes catapulted the
movement into a much angrier and more vociferous collection of disgruntled
men. First, the seismic economic shifts
that have transformed America in one short generation, from a nation of
middle-class achievers with a small upper and lower class, into an utterly
bifurcated nation of the super-rich and everyone else. Many of these middle class
guys – outsourced, downsized, benefits slashed – are bitter and angry to begin
with. This stands next to an important change among the men themselves: despite
the histrionics and hyperbole, the MRAs were right about one thing: fatherhood. Or at least partly right. While the story is
far more complicated than the Fathers'
Rights movement would have it, there is some truth to their claims that the
reason so many fathers feel utterly screwed by the divorce and custody
proceedings is because the laws, and their enforcement, are woefully out of
date and evoke a time in American family history that is long past.

The final change is easier to describe. The
development of the Internet has fuelled websites and blogs that keep the
conversation going and the blood boiling. The emergence of what one writer
calls the “manosphere” is a loose collection of websites that sustain the rage.
The Internet provides just a man cave, a politically incorrect locker room,
where you can say whatever you feel like saying without having to back it up
with something as inconvenient as evidence, and still hide behind a screen of
anonymity so that no one knows that you’re the jerk you secretly think you just
might be. That’s a recipe for rage.

So what are they saying? A recent column on the Men’s News Daily site, an activist
clearinghouse, captures both the rage and the rationale of these defenders of
Men’s Rights. Here’s just a little sample.

"The misandric
Zeitgeist, the system of feminist governance that most are sill loathe to
acknowledge is about to head toward its inevitable and ugly conclusion, and the
results of that will inflict another deep wound on the psyche of the western
world."

And another:

"Lets have 10
Million Man March ! Lets Stand up to those feminist Natzis [sic] like Hillary
Clinton !! Lets have it brothers I’m ready !!!! Lets go to Washington DC and
stay there for a month let them know we mean it . We are not going back to our
jobs till you don’t change those nasty laws in this country. Lets see what
they are going to do ?? Arrest us all ??? I don’t think so….there’s no room in
the jails for all of us . let’s have a showdown. lets see what women are going
to do with no cops, no electricians, no soldiers to go to stupid wars ,with no
mechanics to fix their cars, no cooks, no farmers etc, etc lets see !!!! I'm
ready! It’s going to be lots of fun . We bring tents and barbys.

TO ALL MAN FROM USA AND CANADA ! UNITE BROTHERS ! LETS END THE MALEBASHING
CULTURE!"

Most of what constitutes Men’s Rights
activism is this sort of recitation, supported by a few anecdotes, and the
occasional series of empirical inversions that usually leave the rational mind
reeling. To hear them tell it, white
men in America are steamrollered into submission, utterly helpless and
powerless. They’re failed patriarchs, deposed kings, and, they’re not only the
“biggest losers” but also the sorest.

There is a deep
contradiction at the heart of Men’s Rights movement: women, especially feminist
women, must be seen as to blame for every problem men seem to be having. If she wants a career, she’s abandoning her
traditionally feminine role and is probably overly sexually adventurous as
well. If she doesn’t, she’s some
gold-digger layabout who is too passive in bed. It’s what I called earlier the “Goldilocks Dilemma” – like the
porridge in the bears’ house, contemporary American women are either “too hot”
or “too cold” but never “just right.” They’re too sexually demanding, career-driven (i.e. “masculinized”) or
they are manipulative money-hungry schemers, who will rob a guy blind and take
him to the cleaners.

What do the MRAs
want?

The “Good
Men Project” - a website that purports to be for such self-described “good
men” but shows remarkable sympathy for anti-feminist diatribes (alongside some
pro-equality content) - recently conducted a survey of its readers to find out
the Top 10 issues that incite MRA passion. The top issue was Fathers’ Rights (with 20% of the total votes) followed
by “feminism” - that has “harmed men”,
anti-male double standards, removing the notion that all men are potential
rapists/paedophiles, reproductive rights (no male pill or right to choose),
better treatment of men regarding false accusations, making government
programmes gender neutral, helping boys to achieve better at school, combatting
negative portrayals in the media, freedom from traditional gender role
expectations (as providers and protectors).

However, perhaps most revealing is what -
or, rather, whom- is missing from the Men’s Rights Top 10. Not a word about the especially dismal
plight of African American men, or Latino men, or working class men - the types
of racial and ethnic and class discrimination they experience, as men,
the stereotypes of their masculinity they are forced to endure, all of which
deprives them of the “rights” claims by other men.

Nor a word about gay men, and the ways in
which they suffer discrimination in employment, housing, or in their ability to
marry the person they love, or the terrible violence that gay, bisexual and
transgender men suffer every single day at the hands of other men (just
who do we think commits virtually every single act of gay bashing?)

Where are the legions of Men’s Rights guys
when it comes to “other” men? Men’s
Rights is almost entirely a movement of angry straight white men. Gay men, Black men, Asian men, Latino men
and other racial and ethnic minority men feel no such sense of entitlement to
power that these middle class white men feel has been unceremoniously and
illegitimately snatched from them.
That’s not to say that in their personal relationships they don’t feel
entitled to unfettered obedience from their children, subservience from women,
and a drive to find their place in the hierarchical pecking order. Many do. They just don’t make a federal case
out of their sense of entitlement. They don’t take it to court or demand
legislation. It’s personal, not
political.

There is
a major difference between being disadvantaged and being discriminated
against. The former suggests that there
are areas of public policy that still rely on outdated stereotypes,
paternalistic policies designed to “protect” helpless, fragile, vulnerable
women from the predations of men and the privations of individual freedom. The
latter, being the victim of discrimination, relies on policies implemented to
single certain groups out for unequal treatment. For example, men are dramatically over-represented in all those hazardous occupations - but every single time women have sought entry into
those occupations, men have vigorously opposed their entry. Once again, that contradiction: on the one
hand, MRAs believe men shouldn’t be “forced” to do all the dangerous jobs; on
the other hand, they also believe that women shouldn’t (and are probably
ill-qualified to) invade men’s territory.
While it’s true that there remain some areas in which being a man is a
disadvantage, there is no evidence that white men are the victims of
discrimination.

Related

This article is published under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any
queries about republishing please
contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.